Ouya to ship minus a few big features

It is never fun to be an early adopter, and those who supported the Kickstarter for the Ouya are going to be surprised to learn that the console will ship with some things missing. While these items are planned to arrive in a later update, it could make many unhappy if they have to wait very long.

Despite reports saying that the Ouya would ship without multiplayer support, it turns out this is incorrect, as the console will support online multiplayer if developers build online multiplayer functionality into their titles.

What Ouya users will not get from the game are online chat support, online friends’ list support, and online achievement tracking. In fact, the initial games will not support achievements at all; but games could be patched later to add achievement support.

According to Ouya, these online features are still planned for the unit and are apparently in development, but will arrive in an update that is planned to be released at some point later this year. Ouya isn’t saying when this update to the console will be ready.

Those that backed the Kickstarter will see their units ship beginning on March 28th, followed by the pre-orders from the Official Ouya online store that will then ship in April. Then, we can expect the Ouya to start appearing at retail stores in early June.